This Innovate Practice full paper presents a cloud-based personalized learning lab platform. Personalized learning is gaining popularity in online computer science education due to its characteristics of pacing the learning progress and adapting the instructional approach to each individual learner from a diverse background. Among various instructional methods in computer science education, hands-on labs have unique requirements of understanding learner's behavior and assessing learner's performance for personalization. However, it is rarely addressed in existing research. In this paper, we propose a personalized learning platform called ThoTh Lab specifically designed for computer science hands-on labs in a cloud environment. ThoTh Lab can identify the learning style from student activities and adapt learning material accordingly. With the awareness of student learning styles, instructors are able to use techniques more suitable for the specific student, and hence, improve the speed and quality of the learning process. With that in mind, ThoTh Lab also provides student performance prediction, which allows the instructors to change the learning progress and take other measurements to help the students timely. For example, instructors may provide more detailed instructions to help slow starters, while assigning more challenging labs to those quick learners in the same class. To evaluate ThoThmore »
Knowledge Graph based Learning Guidance for Cybersecurity Hands-on Labs
Hands-on practice is a critical component of cybersecurity education.
Most of the existing hands-on exercises or labs materials
are usually managed in a problem-centric fashion, while it lacks a
coherent way to manage existing labs and provide productive lab
exercising plans for cybersecurity learners. With the advantages
of big data and natural language processing (NLP) technologies,
constructing a large knowledge graph and mining concepts from unstructured
text becomes possible, which motivated us to construct
a machine learning based lab exercising plan for cybersecurity education.
In the research presented by this paper, we have constructed
a knowledge graph in the cybersecurity domain using NLP technologies
including machine learning based word embedding and
hyperlink-based concept mining. We then utilized the knowledge
graph during the regular learning process based on the following
approaches: 1. We constructed a web-based front-end to visualize
the knowledge graph, which allows students to browse and search
cybersecurity-related concepts and the corresponding interdependence
relations; 2. We created a personalized knowledge graph for
each student based on their learning progress and status; 3.We built
a personalized lab recommendation system by suggesting more relevant
labs based on students’ past learning history to maximize their
learning outcomes. To measure the effectiveness of the proposed
solution, we have conducted a use case study and collected survey
data from a graduate-level cybersecurity class. Our study shows
that, by more »
- Award ID(s):
- 1723440
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10193689
- Journal Name:
- ACM Global Computing Education Conference (CompEd)
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- 194 to 200
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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